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‘Nothing happened!’ he says, jerking back, his voice going high-pitched. ‘Fuck, this is all just – madness. Pointing fingers at me, when you can’t even look at yourself. Owen was so great, was he? You were so great?’
‘I’m not evenwithOwen.’
‘So you know how this feels, then, don’t you, Millie? This.’ He slams a hand, hard against his chest.
‘Please leave, Nicholas.’
A slow, harsh smirk curves his mouth, but his eyes, glisten. Desperation. Exasperation. A man with nothing else to lose. ‘I walked in on him once, Owen, by the way. Flirting away with Alexis. At one of our barbecues. Remember you left? A migraine or some shit.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘Thefaceson them both .?.?.’
And I know this is Nicholas. That he’s spouting spiteful bullshit because he’s hurt. But my skin chills at his words. I remember that day. Alexis didn’t like Owen. Not at all. But that day, they’d got into a deep chat about parents – Owen and his dad, Alexis and her mum, who’d upped and left the family, including Alexis’s sixteen year old sister, for a man in Cornwall, a few years before. They’d stood in the kitchen together for ages, chatting, drinks in hand, as Cate and I flitted in and out, meandering around them, grabbing food to take outside. I wasdelightedthey were speaking.
‘And yet I download an app for a laugh,’ says Nicholas, shaking his head, dragging two hands through his long, messy hair.
‘Please will you justgo.’
‘I brought her fucking post.’
‘Then give me the post!’
My voice echoes around the car park. Thunder rumbles again, and rain starts to pelt the ground, like gravel.
He scrunches up his face. ‘Do you know what? I tried for her.I loved her.I provided for her, yet, here I am, and I have – nothing. And do you know what I think? You just want to bring my Cate down—’
‘Me?I want Cate to be happy. And she isn’tyourCate—’
‘What did you just say?’ And he’s up in my face again now, but closer. I stand, frozen to the spot.
But before I can say anything else, Ralph pushes past me, grabs Nicholas by the arm and drags him across the driveway.
Nicholas trips, a long leg folding beneath him on the pavement. He blinks up at Ralph.
‘Get off our fucking property,’ Ralph says slowly and calmly. Then he walks back to me, guiding me gently inside, and slams the door behind us.
Chapter Eighteen
I don’t think I’ve seen Dad this exhausted and wrung out, for years. It’s the sort of tiredness that runs deeper than not having enough sleep. I know what that looks like on him – the puffy eyes, the paler skin, the sleepy smile. I remember that from when I was seven and would wake him at 3 a.m. on Christmas morning donking a full-up Christmas stocking on his head. I know that from when he’d pick Cate and I up from the train station at half past midnight when we were eighteen, yawning at a red light, turning to me and smiling, so as to not give himself away, just in case I might suggest I get a taxi. ‘I can’t bear the waiting for the key to go in the lock,’ he’d say. ‘I’d sooner come and get you.’
But this is a different tiredness. This is red-eyed, grey-skinned, been-up-all-night, all-week, my-world-has-crumbled, dog exhaustion. This is evidence of a lie. A betrayal. A hair-line crack down his smooth, protected, nurtured marriage.
The sky is blank and colourless, drizzling a humid, British mist. We walk slowly, despite the drizzle, along Grand Parade, towards the steep, grassy ruggedness of the east cliffs. Dad and I traipse side by side in silence, the flask in my hand, two packets of biscuits in my handbag, like Mum always used to have in her backpack. I can still see them so clearly in my memory – the packets wedged next to each other neatly in a row, ready for me to choose, mine and Kieran’s fingers running along them, as if it was a library shelf. And I wait, with a held breath, footsteps and sloshing tea, until Dad speaks.
‘Your mum told me,’ he says, eventually, and my heart drops like a stone, even though I knew that’s what he was going to say.
‘And are you all right?’ I ask, and my voice sounds tiny, like it’s trapped in the bottom of a jar.
‘I, er .?.?.’ Dad hefts a breath in, and already, I can see there are tears in his tired, dull eyes. ‘I’m not sure, really, darling,’ he says. ‘I wish I could say yes, I’m fine, but I’m not quite all right at the moment.’
And I hate it. I hate how sad he sounds, his words flat and toneless.
I nod. ‘I’m – I’m sorry, Dad.’
‘You have nothing to be sorry for.’
We walk some more. We’re at the edge of the steep, grassy mound of the east cliffs now, and the estuary fills the horizon. We wander through the beachy grass, on the footpath, the steepness causing us to walk like we’re shuffling down the aisle of a moving bus, and as much as this isn’t exactly a ‘happy’ trip out to the seaside, I’m grateful for the forceful, unforgiving blasts of cold air, for the sweet, salty smell of the sea. Especially after Nicholas shook us all up; how sorry poor Cate was, as ifsheis the one who should feel sorry. And then there’s that thing he said, too, about Alexis and Owen. And something about it – the mulling over of things in my world that might be unsaid and unseen – that makes the whole glitch thing, roll into my mind like a chosen bingo ball. The ‘someone sending it on purpose’ thing that is ‘just a theory’. The wondering about if it’s true. And if it is, who? Why? And so I close my eyes against the shower of drizzle, let the thunder of the sea and autumn wind, drown it all out. Every inch of it.
‘Watch yourself, Millie Moo,’ Dad says, the steep footpath beneath our shoes, but he adds nothing more until we’ve descended the wonky stone steps, and arrived at Cliff Bridge, a winding elaborate bridge that always reminds me of a giant helter-skelter.
‘I knew something was wrong with your mum,’ Dad says, finally, sighing. His chubby, rough cheeks are raspberry pink. ‘And I admit I ignored it, that feeling. My gut, I suppose. What I really felt. Pretended I didn’t. Hid it away. And .?.?. the more I think about it, I don’t even know why I’m surprised that this is something she wants to do. Julian. Because your mum, she’s so herself. The sort of person who just does what she likes, what she feels isright, and that’s all the explanation she needs to give in order to do it. And if her heart wants something .?.?.’ He shrugs, shows his palms, as if demonstrating being empty-handed, but there’s warmth, still, as he talks about her. A tiny flicker of a cosy fire in his eyes; because that’s what he loves about Mum. ‘And I evenunderstand.I can’t stand the man, Millie, but I .?.?. I do understand the wanting to do it.’
